Thanks to the generosity of my Director and Manager, Tim Riley and Tony Chung respectively, as well as Jack Aiello, my High School Computer Science Teacher, I was able to present at the high school I graduated from, Independence High School about Mozilla and what it can offer students who are interested in pursuing a career on the Internet. Mozilla means a whole bunch of things to a lot of different people; but to me, it’s an opportunity…and that’s something I wanted kids at my alma mater to understand. It’s an opportunity for them to gain skills; a way to provide community service and to make the internet better all on their own time and at their own homes. Here was the presentation I created and used:

What I saw was that there’s definitely interest. Jack Aiello and his students wanted to get involved and about 10-12 students (out of the 130-150 or so students I spoke to) personally came up to me after the presentation(s) to ask for specific tasks they could do to get started. I thought that was curious because I had given them the same information that we had given others who plops into our newsgroups and irc channels looking for things to do and that usually turns out well.

I talked to Jack Aiello about this afterwards and the thing we took away from it was that how Mozilla could show college applications that these students had done something (other than writing code) was never explained. He mentioned a signed certificate mentioning that the kids did a certain task that was assigned to them (for a certain person in the community) would probably be enough. That led to the second thing that caused some disconnect, these kids needed mentors to help show them the ropes in a specific task. Mozilla definitely doesn’t have something like this in the community, but we do have all the aspects necessary to make it happen. There are people all throughout the Mozilla Community who own tasks/areas/groups/etc. that are well-versed in what they do and are always looking for help. The only thing that we need is a list of people who have an assignable and simple task to complete whether they’re in class or out of class.

Jack went all the way to offer class time for these kids to get some real tasks completed if I was willing to get those two things for him…and I think that’s very possible. There was a lot of stuff happening during each of the 5 talks I gave that I wasn’t able to remember, but here’s some of the things I did:

Some other Interesting Take-Aways:

A lot of them didn’t know about a bunch of different features on Firefox 3.5, but all were agreement that the reason that about 60% of each class used Firefox over other web browsers is due to a lot of reasons we already hear (add-ons, faster, free, highly customizable) and a few ones that we don’t normally hear (lots of updates are a good thing because they feel Firefox is always trying to better itself and security updates are made very quickly and often).

There were three times that I saw a lot of heads nod in understanding what I was talking about:
- When I showed them that Mozilla is an opportunity
- When I searched Bugzilla for the bug and patch that added Private Browsing to Firefox
- When I showed them how to (step-by-step) contact our Mozilla Community (specifically newsgroups and irc channels)

There were a couple ‘wow’ and ‘cool’ moments as well:
- Showing Personas for Firefox
- Showing the NY Times Ad made for Firefox 1.0 and explaining the ’static’ on the left page

A quick note before the entry: I did this because it was my first month off from school+work for a full month and wanted to do something fun that was anti-MBA. So, it was more of an experiment than anything else. Plus, beards are super awesome and deserve to be grown. I apologize for the lack of pictures.

A noticeable length was beginning to form with each strand and the “beard” was beginning to create it’s own little personality. What resulted was a number of quizzical, but pleasant looks from people checking out the “beard” for the first time. It was beginning to get rather itchy especially in 90 degree weather, but it wasn’t as bad as what other bearded and ex-bearded folk explained from their experiences. The one definite logistical positive out of this was not having to spend the time every other day in shaving my facial hair.

At this point, I had a couple of new things to think about that I never had to deal with before: hair growing over the lip, growing in ways that I didn’t expect and what was I going to do when I get one of those “3 on the top and 2 on the sides” haircuts I usually get?

The hairs got in the way while I ate or drank anything if I didn’t trim every other day, so that was a definite priority. This turned into a lot more work than I’m usually accustomed to. Even when I started doing small changes on one part of the beard, I felt the need to take care of the entire beard. An estimated time of 5 minutes ended up taking 15 minutes due to the nature of how my hair grows not only on top of my lips, but also around the jawline and on the neck. It just got kinda nasty after a day or two for that last week.

Past that, the human interaction aspects of how it affected my life started creeping in once it got filled out. It was more than often, the terrorist label came up between friends and family and people in general gave these deer-in-the-headlight stares until they heard me speak to them. It was a bit odd, but certainly not disheartening. Nevertheless, there was this major change in perception of my personality from people, who were at least acquaintances, based on something as arbitrary as facial hair.

In retrospect, my little experiment proved to me that perception continues to be a funny thing. It has a huge part in how we define the way we perform actions in our personal worlds and how others define the way they not only react to our actions, but also supplant those actions with their own personal world. In effect, they create a perception based on something that’s not completely fair, but very natural to the human psyche.

In the end, I’d still love to do it again, but only when I’m in a phase of my life that allows me to do such things with ease.

Mozilla now has a new WebDevQA Emporer, Stephen Donner! This coronation is meant to be a celebration for the amazing growth in his WebDev QA Kingdom over the past 4 months. He’s gone from a single knight vanquishing bugs at a remarkable pace to bringing in six more valiant helpers in his quest to provide quality across all of Mozilla’s webpages! So, here we are. Let’s all help and bring forth the era of the WebDevQA Emporer!

As with any great Emporer, he needs an equally talented Empress. In this case, there was no one better suited than our very own Samuel Sidler! The service was held on Thursday, August 20, at 3pm. For a video of the event, check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyWnxuOlYVc

I want to thank Raymond “Ray-Ray” Etornam for being the ebb to my flow on this little project, Brandon Sterne for taking video of the coronation and uploading it to Youtube and everyone else involved on getting this done.

What we’ve done so far over the past 3 months:
- 2,636 manual test cases run via litmus
- 150 Bugs created spanning multiple Mozilla related projects
- 8 MozMill Testscripts created
- 15 Website Test Reports collected
- An average of 39.3 Testday participants on IRC partaking in the day’s activities

I’m pretty proud of the work that’s been done so far by the Mozilla QA Community since we re-started Testdays on a bi-monthly basis. That’s a lot of results over a time when we were still trying to figure out how to use Testdays in the best way possible and squeeze the amount of participation with what we had at the time.

Of course, it’s still in its infancy as a lot of infrastructure is still in need of being built up ( i.e. standard test guides, indexing participants and their contributions over individual as well as multiple Testdays, QMO work, creating a persistent Testday personality, etc. ) as well as finding a way to spread the word to people who really do need these events to hone their skills and/or learn new ones ( i.e. currently discouraged workers, students [high school and college], those who are just interested in web QA work, those interested in the advocation of the quality of the internet’s content, etc. ). A lot of it is already in the process of being done, so expect us to get a lot better and a lot more efficient in the coming months as we continue to drive this to wherever it may go.

With all of that said, what would you like to see out of Testdays that you haven’t seen already? I’d love to hear anything, especially comments and concerns, about what the Mozilla Community has seen so far and would like/like not to see again!

I recently attended the wedding of a family friend in which a number of conversations about Firefox-love-and-destroy-IE-completely came up. Now, at first I didn’t pay any attention to it as I thought it was just a form of congratulations on the new job, but looking back on it, the responses were more than that. A number of these people, many of whom I had seen only once or twice in my lifetime, raved on and on about it. The it they were talking about wasn’t the browser; it was the switch they had made. They were given the opportunity to choose their browser and make it better if they so wanted.

Now, this concept has been beaten half to death within the Mozilla community as well as those in the know about open source projects, but I don’t think the movement has fully scratched the surface of its potential to the rest of the world. You see, those wedding attendees weren’t just talking about a simple switch of their primary web browser. It was the fact that someone had built a system to give them the opportunity to make a change against a very inhumane state of affairs. They, nay, We wanted to be shown that something could be done to change the status quo…and it was. So, a little over 10 years later, where does it go from here? I have no idea, but I’d like to think that this is just the starting point.

There’s been a lot of new questions I’ve had to ask myself when its come to thinking of a way to change the workflow for the Mozilla QA team’s web portal, QMO. Namely, am I really doing this correctly? I mean this is the first time I’ve had to do anything of the sort, especially creating mock ups and work-flow diagrams.

With that said, it’s been incredibly fun and its something I really enjoy doing, but that in no way means that I’m any good at it… and that’s scary. Not because a lot of people are going to be seeing the results of this project, but because I care about the ideals of the company and want its culture and ways of doing things to be spread throughout the rest of the world. Unfortunately, to truly believe in that means to truly want the best results to be put out there. And to have the best results come out of this project means to have the most experienced and most creative people/team working on it. From that line of logic, well, we don’t want to mess this up by out-workflowing the workflow. Making the darn thing too simple might backfire and either force the user to think that there isn’t enough stuff that goes around here or get lost after starting their experience with MozQA.

Here, take the Get Involved Section for example:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/Community/QMO_Discoverability/Get_Involved

It’s meant as a simple, easy-to-understand workflow that gets the user to be a part of the MozQA Community, but will it be obvious to the user? Is there too much information on the Get Involved page? Do I need a foxkeh or two? Now, multiply this over a couple sets of audiences and this smorgasbord of UX complexity just shouts its prominence from the rooftops.

Oh well, at least I’ll know how to use it.

A month into my new job at Mozilla and it’s pretty much everything I expected to be and a lot more. It does sounds rather cliche, but it’s true. Coming into it, I expected a hectic pace, incredibly bright and passionate people and a fun environment. After a few weeks of working in-house with everyone there, all those things turned out to be very true. Yet, they don’t explain the uniqueness of the company completely.

At first, I thought of it as like working in a think tank because ideas and the talk of new ideas was very free-form and open. But, that’s not completely analogous as think tanks extend their ideas via advocating policies, rules, laws, etc. Mozilla is more about empowerment through creating a platform to implement ideas that are created within their community. So, it’s incredibly unique to any other organization in the world as it’s capable and deeply motivated in creating and maintaining commitment to make the web, and the world indirectly, a better place.

Now, most people that are pretty knowledgeable about the company and it’s history already understand that, but it’s not until you see everyone here working on a day-to-day basis that you get a full appreciation for that culture. The ground-work done to create this communal-based practice of empowerment is something that is felt throughout the organization and it’s community of volunteers no matter how much experience, education or standing you have. To me, it’s the reason why the people at Mozilla are so passionate and unique. Mostly everyone understands it, at least, in a subconscious level and want this way of doing projects to spread. This entire experience just makes me a lot more excited about the world and I’m glad I’ve gotten a chance to take part in it.

A detox from a trip to Mexico really only consists of three things: getting acclimated to non-meat engorged food, souvenirs and lots of rest; and that’s what we did on our last day on the trip. Vy and I checked out the local wafflehouse to get our brunch on. Most of it was good, but the best part about the restaurant was probably the fact that, dare I say it, it wasn’t classic Mexican food. That’s not to say waffles are anywhere near healthy, especially the ones made in Mexico, but it was definitely better than the Meat-fest we’d been pigging out on for the past week.

The second part of the detox had us going back to the ever-infamous “Artisan Market” where to make a boring story short, resulted in 14 shot glasses for each of us and an elated Vy. I say elated because the poor guy spent a 1/2 hour trying to barter for the first time and ended up paying close to the original amount he started bartering with. The day got a lot more eventful from then on though.

The flight over was definitely rough between Puerto Vallarta and Dallas Fort Worth as it took as 1/2 an hour to get to the airport (it had taken us way less than that to leave it at the beginning of the trip) and it would have been more if it wasn’t for our taxi cab driver who was apparently training to become a driver in the next Transporter movie. There was one specific moment where he blatantly ran through a red light (the cars had just finished going through the intersection from our sides) and zoomed past a pedestrian on that same intersection. The fun times didn’t stop there as even at the airport, boarding ended up becoming a problem as customs and security were even worse than the US’ post 9/11. Each luggage bag, even the ones being checked in, were opened and inspected very thoroughly for every person in line.Not to sound redundant, but it didn’t end there.

The worst part about the flight over was actually when we got into Dallas Forth Worth. Our flight had been a 1/2 hour late and most of the people on the plane had connecting flights departing 40 minutes after we had landed, including ourselves. Unfortunately, American Airlines didn’t do any of us any favors as everyone had to rush out of the plane, grab their checked in luggage, drop them off to a check-in spot again and then run over to a gate whose whereabouts were unknown. Vy and I literally ran our ourselves between two terminals for a good 20 minutes, stopped at a McDonalds since we hadn’t had any food since brunch [it was 9:30pm at this point], and got to the terminal right when boarding had begun. You gotta laugh about the state of the airline industry including the recession when stuff like this happens. Anyways, a really fun trip. I’d love to go back again, just not until my stomach settles from all those tacos.

Next time you go vacationing, don’t think the place that has no reviews online and forces a person to sign a death waiver to partake in what it’s offering will be a fun place to check out. We took the shuttle to check out to Pacific Bungee Jump on our way to the Botanical Gardens and it was basically abandoned. It took us about 10 knocks for anyone to notice we were in and the guy that answered basically just waved the death and injury waiver form in front of us and said “please sign, friend”. Vy put it best, “…it’s all about trust…and well, this place didn’t inspire it”. If we had both decided to do the jump, he could have easily just let us fall to our deaths and no one would have noticed our loss for 2-3 days. So, we jetted out of there as quick as possible and tried to take the bus the rest of the way (18 mi. for 10 pesos!) to Mismaloya’s Botanical Gardens.

Unfortunately, it turned into a 3 hour mistake-laden trip as we took the wrong bus [El Tuito goes to the gardens, the Mismaloya line only goes up to El Eden] after stopping off at the Bungee Jump of Death and arrived at the less than impressive (but promising) gardens. It had only been open for 5 years, so there wasn’t enough growth to really have the place be very worthwhile from a floral standpoint. On the other hand, the main building turned out to be surprisingly tranquil. It had a great view, there were incredibly comfy chairs and it was so far into the plot of land, that there really wasn’t any noise seeping in from Puerto Vallarta. In that sense, the place was well worth the trip.

To cap the night off, we checked out a favorite of our friend Jo-Jo’s, the Fajita Republic Grill. Boy, did he not disappoint us there. It had the best meat in Puerto Vallarta and would have definitely been a place we would have went to more than once if it wasn’t our last night in town. I had the chicken tacos and Vy had the Fajita del Presidente (shrimp, chicken and steak!). The food was prepared in a really cool manner as everything was put out on our table as sides instead of ready made plates (which makes sense for the fajitas, but it was the same for the tacos too). It consisted of a basket of tortillas, a skillet of meat, sweet onions,  rice, beans, cheese, guacamole, salsa verde and mild salsa. For a place that sounds like a US transplant, it really did deliver on the quality of the food. The locals knew all about it as the place got so packed at 7pm that there was a good wait to get into the place.

Since this was the last night in Puerto Vallarta, here’s some thoughts on the trip that didn’t really fit into any specific day:

• PV’s idea of salsa is less sauce and more large chopped vegetables such as cilantro, onion, tomato, green pepper and some spices.
• Cafe de Olla was a resounding “meh” after 2 visits, but I have a feeling that the Fajita Republic Grill and Pipi’s are definitely worth re-visits on the next trip into town.
• Make sure you, or someone in your group, has a conversational understanding of Spanish as it really pays off when trying to get around town.

Today was definitely was the highlight of the trip as we got to go Ziplining via Los Veranos Canopy Tours. They were incredibly fun and very professional at the same time…which made the rest of our group a lot more comfortable with entrusting our lives to them. There were a group of 5-6 college-age instructors that seemed just happy to be working the coolest summer job on the face of the planet (hey, it’s their summer). They kept a smile on their faces and, more importantly, made sure we kept a smile on ours throughout the 1 1/2 – 2 hour excursion which can get pretty difficult in humid 80 degree weather with a bunch of tourists.

The company did a great job on the lines as well as there were about 20-21 in total with a couple greater than 800m in length and pretty dang high up too. The guys let us flip around, go backwards and, for the daredevils, let our hands go and mock-fly across the forest skyline. It was a nice precursor to skydiving or bungee jumping as any fear of heights I might have had before were nullified from today. It’s a non-stop ride of adrenaline that kept us all excited throughout and exhausted afterwards. For anyone that’s thinking about going to Puerto Vallarta, seriously put this as a priority. If you’re worried about security, you really shouldn’t. It was safe and easy enough for the group of 70 year olds that were with us, so it’s really no big deal.

After getting back, we headed back to Cafe de Olla for a quick dinner and tried to end on a high note with that place by ordering some giant Mango Margaritas. They were pretty good, even though the blender they used didn’t do us any favors with the partially diced mangoes. Either way, a guy just can’t go wrong with chips and salsa, chicken tostadas and mango margaritas for $8.

As for the rest of the night, I just wanted to add one little snippet. I got a chance to talk to some of the waiters in the Malecon after seeing a bunch of the restaurants half-filled even at 7pm. They said that the recession really wasn’t doing them any favors as the Hotel Zone was really hurting bad even though Zona Romantica was going real strong from their usual crowd. That’s kinda sad to hear as this place definitely is a tourist trap in some respects and the fact that people don’t even want to go to a cheap, and relatively close,  destination like Mexico doesn’t bode well for other places across the globe. Some food for thought.